Yemen Central Bank YCB will tighten up supervision of national banks at a time when the country is making major efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, head of the anti-money laundering unit at the Bank said on Wednesday.
At the opening of a training course on fighting money laundering being organized by the Studies and Economic Media Center in cooperation with the Middle East Partnership Initiative, Wadi'a Al-Sada said the Bank will intensify visits to banks and exchange stores in the coming period to make sure all measures to fight money laundering are applied appropriately.
Our banks have tools to achieve more on this issue, but staffs don’t have enough knowledge how to do that, he said, urging Yemeni banks to exert more efforts to tackle money laundering.
"We hope that skills the trainees are learning during this training will yield concrete results on the ground."
For his part, head of the Studies and Economic Media Center Mustafa Nasr said that issuing the executive bylaw of anti-money laundering law was a good step toward promoting transparency at the financial sector.
He urged all banks to obey the law, saying if the law is not implemented, this will have negative impacts on Yemen's economy and will reduce opportunities of its integration with other economies.